Now the question no longer is: how shall we learn English
so that we may take part in the social life of America and
partake of her benefits; the big question is: how can we preserve
the language of our ancestors here, in a strange environment,
and pass on to our descendants the treasures which it contains?
{2}

Throughout the history of the Norwegian-American community,
the relation of English and Norwegian has involved an element
of controversy. Known as Sprogspørsmaalet, or the Language
Question, this controversy raged more or less openly within
family, neighborhood, and social institutions wherever Norwegian
immigrants settled in sufficient numbers to create a self-contained
group. We cannot hope to do more here than sketch the profile
of this struggle. Some of the more spectacular episodes will
be told, but it must be understood that these are only the
public expression of a private tension that had its root in
the steady pressure exerted on the immigrant by the dominant
American environment. The public discussion was protracted
and often bitter, with vigorous agitators on both sides; but
the basic trend was probably not greatly affected by it. The
heart of the matter was the situation within the family; this
was the primary battleground. But the individual family was
supported in its linguistic usage by other families, which
together constituted a neighborhood. Social institutions grew
up which organized the teaching and indoctrination of the
language, the most important of these being the church. We
shall consider the role of each of these social groupings
in the language struggle --- home, neighborhood, and institutions
--- and then [2] sketch some of the major developments in
the campaign that the immigrant fought so gallantly but vainly
to maintain the language of his ancestors.

I. THE FAMILY AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Within the family the maintenance of a foreign language depends
on the desire of the parents to carry it on, the authority
of the parents over their children, and the degree of pressure
from outside. Parents who had immigrated from Norway as adults
usually had little inclination to adopt English as the family
language. All the lore that it is natural for parents to transmit
to their children had come to them in Norwegian and was available
to them only in that language. The nursery rhymes, the proverbs,
the anecdotes, the family sayings, the prayers, the songs:
all of these had been woven into the very process of language
learning in childhood. Even if the adult could learn them
in a new language, they would have no flavor; and who was
available in any case to teach them to him? Only in Norwegian
could the immigrant father and mother function as such, and
they vigorously resisted any attempt to lessen their socio-cultural
role. By living in a Norwegian-speaking community they multiplied
their chances of being able to carry out this role, since
their children were not then under any strong social pressure
to use English. Wherever contact with English-speaking children
was active, as in an urban community, the children brought
home with them a keen desire to speak English. Only by the
establishment of ironclad rules, by which English was banned
from the home, could the parents resist this invasion. This
counterpressure by the parents had to be stronger than the
social pressure toward English of the environment. If the
social pattern in the community was favorable to English,
the parents were in a difficult position. It now became a
question of parental authority, with the children often sullen
and rebellious and the parents torn between a determination
[3] to impose their own linguistic pattern and a desire to
see their children content. American social practice in general
favored a weakening of parental authority, and so the rebellion
against the Norwegian linguistic pattern went hand in hand
with a freeing of the children from their other social modes
of behavior.

Wherever the parents were successful in asserting their authority
over the children, some degree of bilingual competence followed.
In country communities the children learned to understand,
speak, and eventually read and write Norwegian. Most of them
became thoroughly bilingual, since the American public school
prevented them from remaining Norwegian monolinguals. But
within the family, Norwegian was the sole means of communication;
and the second, or American-born generation, acquired the
same set of childhood memories and everyday lore that their
parents had brought along from Norway. Many of this generation
have felt a loyalty to the Norwegian tradition stronger than
that of many first-generation immigrants. But whenever a community
grew sufficiently Americanized so that the social pressure
from it set up a strong internal resistance to the children's
learning Norwegian, both city and country reacted very much
alike. Instead of a full competence in Norwegian, the children
acquired only a partial competence. Writing fell away first,
then reading. The effort required to impose these skills became
too great for the parents. Similarly, the children succeeded
in limiting the sphere within which Norwegian was spoken.
They spoke it only to one or a few older members of the family,
usually a grandparent, while they spoke English to all others.
If their position was exceptionally strong, they succeeded
in evading the speaking entirely, even to their parents. This
bilingual situation was highly typical, with parents speaking
Norwegian and children answering in English. Eventually the
parents might also [4] succumb to the pressure exerted by
this uncomfortable situation and go over to English themselves.

The development here sketched is so typical that one encounters
it again and again in discussing these matters with children
of immigrants. Both children and parents seem almost like
pawns in a game which they do not themselves understand. The
parents grumble because their children will not obey them
and accuse the younger generation of turning their backs on
the ideals of the past. The children complain at being made
to learn a language which represents a "foreign"
outlook to them and is in no way associated with the glory
of the goals held out to them by their surroundings. Curiously
enough, when they grow up and look back at their childhood
years with adult eyes, they often blame their parents for
not having taught them the language. By this time they have
forgotten the bitter struggle they themselves put up against
that teaching. They have come to realize some of the values
that were lost in the shift, but only after it is too late.

A single family can, of course, carry on a linguistic tradition
if its cohesion is sufficiently strong. Cultured families
can be found where bilingualism is deliberately cultivated
for the sake of maintaining contacts with the homeland. But
most families cannot afford to carry on a bilingual tradition
unless they are supported by the presence of other such families
within the same neighborhood. Our discussion of the intra-family
situation has shown that much depends on the strength of the
external pressure. No family in a civilized society can live
to itself alone, and if there is a whole neighborhood within
which the immigrant language is maintained, the external pressure
favors it, or at least is less insistently unfavorable. The
children who play together all come from Norwegian-speaking
homes, and the few who do not are forced to learn the language
of the others, instead of the converse. As late as 1918-20,
schoolteachers have had to [5] contend singlehanded in some
Norwegian-American communities with this immigrant-language
pressure. Informants report with monotonous regularity that
as children they spoke Norwegian except during the actual
classroom instruction. The teacher often threatened them with
punishment for speaking it in the schoolyard, but they returned
to it eagerly as soon as they were out of her surveillance.

In such cases the neighborhood becomes synonymous with those
who speak the language; those who do not are outsiders, even
if they live within the geographical radius. From Westby,
Wisconsin, a story is told of a newcomer from Norway who wished
to learn English and boarded in the home of the only Irishman
in town, only to discover that Norwegian was spoken at the
family table. {3} Under such circumstances the small villages
which grew up as trading posts were themselves engulfed and
became Norwegian-speaking centers. On Wednesdays and Saturdays,
farmers came in to buy and sell and be entertained. Even if
they had ceased to speak Norwegian at home because of the
pressure from children or wives, they could here meet with
others who spoke it, and gain a real enjoyment in the use
of the immigrant tongue.

Studies of communities where Norwegian has survived the longest
show that at the grass-roots level the neighborhood spirit
has played a powerful role. John P. Johansen studied the prevalence
of the language in the Norwegian churches of South Dakota
in 1935-36. He found that the use of Norwegian was strongest
"in the compact, early established settlement"!
In those areas where the settlements dated from before 1880,
Norwegian was still used in 22.8 per cent of the church services,
while in the more scattered communities of the western part
of the state it was used in only 4.4 per cent. {4} The same
can be shown in Wisconsin. The areas where [6] Norwegian has
survived the longest in popular speech are not necessarily
those areas where the number of persons born in Norway is
largest nor those which were settled most recently. More Norwegian
was probably spoken in Waupaca County with its 861 foreign-born
Norwegians (in 1940) than in Racine with its 688 or Milwaukee
with its 2,020. The Waupaca County settlements go back to
the early 1850's, but they are still more Norwegian than the
later settlements in the northern counties of the state; for
example in Barton County. The same applies to larger areas:
more Norwegian appears to be spoken in Wisconsin than in the
state of Washington, although the number of foreign-born Norwegians
was 26,489 in the latter and only 23,211 in the former in
1940. Of course such factors as continued immigration have
played an important role, since much of the recent immigration
has gone to the same areas as did the earlier, thereby reinforcing
the use of the language. But immigration which is dispersed
in the cities or in marginal rural areas is more quickly anglicized
than that which maintains its solid neighborhood core. In
the latter people speak Norwegian simply because everybody
else does, without reflecting much about it; for them it is
not a cultural duty or a program of behavior. If you ask why
they do so, it is difficult for them to find an answer.

II. THE LARGER INSTITUTIONS

In due course the family and neighborhood situation was formalized
by one or more institutions that provided tangible symbols
around which the speakers of Norwegian could rally. These
institutions provided the terminology for a discussion of
the use of the language on a community and nation-wide level.
In the case of the Norwegians, as apparently among most immigrants,
the church is the primary institution providing the immigrants
with a justification for the use of the language. A map of
the congregations of the Lutheran [7] Church, plus a few dissident
churches, is practically a map of the organized use of Norwegian
in America. The church provided most of the instruction furnished
in the reading and writing of Norwegian. Because of its essentially
conservative nature, the church acquired an institutional
momentum which carried its insistence on Norwegian beyond
the time when its younger members could appreciate using it.
But eventually the rebellion against the immigrant language
reared its head in the church also, and, faced with this problem,
the church compromised its lesser goal for the sake of its
larger one. To stay alive and carry on its spiritual message
the church had to yield and become first bilingual, then increasingly
English. This did not take place without controversy, whether
on the local, parish level or on the national, synodical level.
The private grumblings of the family heads were here translated
into a vigorous agitation for the retention of the traditional
language, with its freight of cultural values, spiritual insights,
and emotional overtones. The more or less passive resistance
of the children now turned into an aggressive policy of Americanization,
which not only tossed the Norwegian language overboard, but
with it a good many special practices of the church that had
marked it out as an immigrant body in comparison with the
older Anglo-Saxon churches. An instructive discussion of this
development in the Swedish-American church can be found in
George Stephenson's Religious Aspects of Swedish Immigration. {5} As might be expected, there are many points of similarity
with the Norwegian-American development.

But the church as a formal institution did not stand alone.
The threat of cultural extinction hovering over the Norwegian-American
group from the beginning was met by other forms of organization
as well. Local, regional, and national societies have been
established in countless numbers. {6} While [8] these had
many purposes, most of them contained as one plank in their
platforms the "preservation of the Norwegian language."
The greater number have been urban, and belong to the period
after 1900. Through the Norwegian-American press they have
reached out and formed larger organizations and conducted
agitation on a wider forum. They have been a secular counterpart
of the church in the work of reinforcing family authority
in favor of preserving the language. But in general they have
been less effective than the church in this part of their
task, partly because they have seldom been able to include
the whole family within their activities. A singing society
has attracted the father, but not necessarily the son; a fraternal
lodge has offered a type of program that did not always interest
the children. American life has provided a multitude of seductions
which competed successfully for the children's interest and
attention, particularly in the cities and after World War
I.

The most comprehensive of these organizations in point of
numbers is the Sons of Norway, whose backbone of support is
provided by fraternal insurance. But its ability to attract
young people to Norwegian-speaking programs has been very
small, and this part of the procedure has very largely been
abandoned in recent years. Next to it comes the Norwegian
Singers' Association of America; it carries on a male chorus
tradition from Norway which has given many fine cultural values
to American programs. The songs are still predominantly Norwegian,
but the language of conversation within most of the choral
bodies, at rehearsal and on festive occasions, is English.
The so-called bygdelags, or home-valley societies, have retained
more of the family-neighborhood speech tradition than other
groups, but their membership is almost exclusively of the
older generation. Their meetings are annual or semi-annual
and are more in the nature of old settlers' picnics than of
the gatherings of [9] effective, forward-looking organizations.
The survival of most of the societies is limited to the life
span of the Norwegian-speaking clientele, and will disappear
with the disappearance of the language.

III. PIONEER DAYS

The earliest Norwegian immigrants had no idea that their
language would survive as long as it actually has. They were
few in number and settled in scattered communities, and they
did not anticipate the mass immigration that would follow
them for a century or more. Their first religious leader,
Elling Eielsen, walked from Illinois to New York just to have
printed an English translation of Luther's catechism. The
Norwegian observer Johan R. Reiersen noted that most of the
settlers in the Illinois settlement at Fox River understood
English and usually attended the "American churches in
the vicinity." An immigrant of 1845 expressed the opinion
that the use of Norwegian would die out "in the second
generation.'' Even the first immigrant newspaper, Nordlyset,
made its appeal for readers in 1847 primarily to those who
had not yet learned enough English to become properly acquainted
with American institutions. Munch Ræder, the Norwegian
jurist who visited southern Wisconsin in 1847, looked upon
this development with some concern. The Norwegians, he wrote,
learned the English language with great ease, but they showed
equal facility "in forgetting their own as soon as they
cease to use it every day." But Munch Ræder, who
took the patriot's view of the matter, saw before his eyes
the rapidly forming settlements of Wisconsin and realized
that these would protect the Norwegians "against influences
foreign to themselves, because their relationship to one another
is stronger than their relationship to other races."
This prediction was amply fulfilled in the century that followed,
for mass migration made it possible to reinforce the family
urge to retain Norwegian by the pressure [10] of neighborhood
practice and the sanction of religious organization. {7}

Early immigrant pastors who might have been tempted to commence
preaching in English or to instruct the young in this language
were quickly encouraged to abandon such ideas. Instead, the
Norwegian language proved to be the sine qua non of successful
ecclesiastical organization among the immigrants. Preachers
and parishioners alike were relatively unskilled in the English
language, and there was obviously little attraction for them
in English religious terminology. There were American faiths
enough in the West that would have been happy to attract the
immigrants and that did indeed succeed in siphoning off a
good many during the early settlement days. By setting up
a Norwegian Lutheran church the pastors established the only
conceivable counterattraction which could have gathered the
immigrants into cohesive and permanent congregations. This
was clearly expressed by a later observer, the Reverend I.
B. Torrison, who wrote: "The Norwegian language was an
instrument of union and a barrier against the sects. {8} Here
the immigrant who treasured the spiritual forms and values
of his own childhood could carry on without a break the religious
life that was the only one he had ever known and to him seemed
the only one worth knowing. The Lutheran Church was not, like
the Catholic, an international organization; in spite of common
origin and many common features, its churches were national
in organization and traditions. Even if there had been an
effective American Lutheran church in the Middle West at this
time, it is questionable whether the Norwegian immigrants
would have patronized it. [11] The university-trained religious
leaders who organized the Norwegian Synod in 1853 were clearly
aware of this fact and expressed it through their concern
for the establishment of Norwegian parochial schools. {9}
Their work turned the tide of dispersion which had been conspicuous
earlier. An unfriendly critic called it a "pastoral Norwegianization";
these ministers "pride themselves on winning a great
victory among the Norwegian Americans by uprooting a desire
and zeal among them to let their children be trained in Americanism.''
{10}

The critic, a Danish schoolmaster named Rasmus Sørensen,
made himself the advocate of a program which later came to
be espoused by the descendants of the same church fathers
who had opposed it so vigorously. He roundly declared that
it was the Christian duty of the Norwegian pastors to have
the immigrants' children learn their religion and Christianity
in "the language of their native country." Any other
policy would be contrary to the best interests of the children,
who might grow up as ignorant "Norwegian Indians."
Sørensen was fearful of the possible transplantation
to American soil of the pastoral overlordship found in many
rural communities in Norway, and he looked with suspicion
on the determination of the pastors to perpetuate the language.
He and some others perceived that in the hands of the pastors
it was a potential instrument of power. {11}

The church leaders did not allay this suspicion by their
obvious leanings toward the German Missouri Synod, with whose
doctrines and parochial school system they made themselves
acquainted in 1857. The uncompromising stand of that church
in its use of the German language may also have stiffened
the determination of the Norwegian leaders [12] in their stand
on Norwegian. The president of the Norwegian Synod, A. C.
Preus, made his position clear in his answer to Sørensen's
criticism when he wrote that religion must be brought to a
child in "the language of the heart." And, "To
bring in religious instruction in English to those who daily
hear and speak and think in Norwegian is 'sheer humbug,'"
he continued. In the following year (1859) the assembled clergymen
of the Norwegian Synod took their stand on the question in
these words: "As long as most of the members of our congregations
do not yet have sufficient familiarity with the English language,
and as long as the Norwegian language almost everywhere is
the family language among us, the language in which most naturally
the daily prayer and family devotions must be held, it is
necessary that both our services and our religious instruction
shall take place in the Norwegian language." This was
practically an echo of the words Preus had written the year
before, though he had then made a more definite prediction
for the future, "When the English language supplants
the Norwegian in the home, our Norwegian speech will have
lost its right to be used in the church and in the religious
school --- but not before." {12}

A year later Professor Laur. Larsen, then in St. Louis at
the seminary of the German Missouri Synod, reported that the
organ of that synod had printed the Norwegian declaration
with approval. He particularly emphasized that the declaration
was not, as some hinted, opposed to the use of English, but
rather that it anticipated its eventual adoption. "To
oppose it," added Larsen, "will always be in vain,
precisely because it is in the order of nature." It was
necessary to teach the people English and to provide pastors
and teaching materials towards the time when English would
become the language of the church. But the main objective
must be [13] to maintain the Lutheran faith and "not
be too quick to mimic everything American before we have tested
whether it is better than our own." {13}

The church had said its last word on this particular question
for a long time to come. We are not here concerned with the
controversy that broke out when the leaders attempted to take
the logical next step, the establishment of a parochial school
system distinct from the American public school. This attempt
was to fail; in the meanwhile a policy was gradually taking
shape in the secular field also. Early writers in Nordlyset had exhorted the Norwegians to keep alive their language;
for example, one Ole Marcusen, who wrote in 1847, "Above
all, brother and sister, do not forget your mother tongue;
for he who forgets his mother tongue is not far from forgetting
his own self." The Norwegians were flattered in that
year by the Wisconsin legislature, which ordered five hundred
copies of the governor's speech to be printed in Norwegian.
This took place over the protest of the representative from
Walworth County, who did not wish to "encourage the immigrants
to retain their old language by providing them with public
documents in Norwegian or German." The editor of Emigranten,
Carl F. Solberg, arrived at a formulation of policy which
foreshadows most of the cultural agitation for the language.
Apparently apropos of the debate between Sørensen and
Preus on the church situation, he declared: "With regard
to the amalgamation of the Norwegians with the Americans and
the total exchange of the language with English, this is something
that must take place gradually and will require several generations.
We must not in every respect throw away the old Norwegian
personality and at once adopt the new American one; there
is much good in the Norwegian which should be transplanted
in this country, and if the Americans have an influence in
certain directions on our mode of thought and behavior, in
others [14] we should have an influence on theirs." This
policy was vigorously supported by a subscriber in Chicago,
who expressed the doctrines of a romantic nationalism when
he wrote, "The language and literature of a people are
an expression of the characteristic spirit and self-consciousness
of a people. . . . If one scorns the language and literature
of one's ancestral land, then one also scorns the folk spirit
that is expressed in it. . . . But who benefits his new country
most, the one who retains his national character and therefore
preserves its good sides, or the one who throws it away?"
{14}

This constructive position with regard to acculturation is
one that has underlain most of the argumentation on behalf
of retaining the immigrant language. Solberg pointed out in
an Emigranten editorial that there were two extreme types
of immigrants who did not accept this position of mediation
between the cultures. On the one hand there were those who
praised America at the expense of Norway, usually the ones
from the most poverty-stricken layers of Norwegian society;
on the other were those who did the opposite; they included
"a small part of the more cultivated Norwegians living
here." The former might be expected to assimilate most
rapidly, the latter most slowly. But the great mass of the
immigrants belonged to neither group; they accepted their
position as mediators who spoke Norwegian as long as it seemed
useful to do so, but turned to English wherever Norwegian
would no longer reach. (They did not take the uncompromising
position of the crab fisherman at Prince Rupert, British Columbia,
who refused to speak Norwegian to a Norwegian-American clergyman
who interviewed him. "In Norway they speak Norwegian,
in America English. I am 100 per cent American, therefore
I speak English." {15} ) [15]

A later interpreter, the writer Waldemar Ager, described
this early period as one of "fencing in" the group.
The purpose of the leaders was to keep "foreign"
influences out, not only American ones, but also many from
Norway. It was his opinion that the shelter thus provided
gave the immigrants a chance to strike root in the new country.
These people were not trying to preserve a "bridge"
back to their homeland; rather were they trying to secure
"something to keep themselves spiritually afloat."
Those parents who taught their children Norwegian could tell
about the homeland, their family, and their memories, help
them with their lessons, and in this way "occupy a position
such that the children naturally would look up to them."
Those who proceeded to a rapid Americanization would place
themselves rather in a position of inferiority to their own
children and inevitably lose their respect. {16}

IV. THE INROADS OF ENGLISH

As immigrants continued to pour in ever-increasing numbers
into the settlements of the Middle West, the church had its
hands full in attempting to provide them with services. The
problems of the day were largely organizational and doctrinal;
while the first generation constituted the bulk of its membership,
the language was no problem. A new secular press sprang up
in the many centers of settlement, which provided a forum
for the debates of the day. These newspapers were naturally
concerned in the retention of reading skill in Norwegian.
Skandinaven, then only five years old, editorialized on the
deplorable fact that "many of the older settlers read
only English-language newspapers, while a good many of those
who have grown up in this country do not even understand Norwegian."
The editor maintained that "every Scandinavian who has
not been completely absorbed in American life (gaaet op i
der amerikanske) should [16] feel it as a necessity to keep
in touch with the political, social, and religious movements
of the homeland." That the inroads of English on the
younger generation were considerable, even at this time, appears
from this quotation. Another example from the same paper is
a contribution by one who signs himself as "born in America
and educated in English"; he says he would like to "keep
up his mother tongue, but the opportunity for doing so is
small." The writer must have grown up in a community
where the Norwegian settlers were not dominant, for his statement
contrasts sharply with a description of the situation from
about the same time: "The fact that English is so to
speak a dead language in the large Norwegian settlements is
an extremely important matter, which must not be overlooked,
since it puts the greatest obstacles in the way of the school's
advancement. When the children begin their schooling, their
vocabulary amounts only to a few broken words, like stove'n,
pail'n, fil'a [the field], etc." The heart of the school
controversy between the Synod clergy and other Norwegians
in this period lay in the realization of the former that public
school in English was bound to be an opening wedge in the
settlements for that language, as indeed it proved to be.
The compromise introduced by the young Norwegian-American
politician, Knute Nelson in Wisconsin, of an hour's teaching
of Norwegian in the public school, satisfied no one. Even
such a wholehearted advocate of the use of Norwegian as Professor
Rasmus B. Anderson could not stomach a parochial school by
means of which the Norwegians would be cut off from their
fellow Americans. In one eloquent passage he posed the issue
very neatly: "If the Norwegian language cannot be preserved
among us for two or three generations without taking our children
out of the common school, very well; we will have to let the
Norwegian language go. If the Lutheran Church cannot make
any progress among us unless we take our children out of the
common school, very well; let the Lutheran Church fall, [17]
and I will say, peace he with its dust!" Fortunately
for both church and language, no such drastic action was necessary.
{17}

The acceptance of the public school by the Norwegians meant
that other means had to be found for the preservation of their
traditions. They resented any expression of nativism on the
part of Americans which seemed to threaten their policy of
gradual rather than sudden Americanization. The Bennett Law
(1889) in Wisconsin, which required a specified amount of
English in all schools, seemed to some to constitute such
a threat. This time Anderson joined those who wished to repeal
it, with the argument that the English language needed no
artificial support. "The English language," he wrote,
"is strong and aggressive; it makes its own way; it needs
no artificial protection; it makes advances throughout the
world; here in America it is not only the language of government
and business, but also the language in which the various foreign
nationalities communicate with each other, and the daily speech
of practically all who grow up in this country. Nothing can
stop the advance of this language; to use it as an excuse
for persecutions is nonsense!" State Senator John A.
Johnson, who had been as ardent a supporter of the public
school as Anderson, agreed fully: "It is now almost impossible
to find settlements where English is not spoken in every family
--- excepting for newcomers --- and the use of the English
language is constantly and rapidly increasing, while the use
of foreign languages is decreasing in a surprisingly rapid
degree." {18} These testimonials give us valuable information
concerning the trend in family speech during a period when
the use of Norwegian was still an accepted matter in all significantly
large settlements. The Norwegian author Hans Seland, who visited
the Norwegian [18] communities around 1900, was surprised
to discover how faithfully the Norwegians had preserved their
dialects and the formal church language. But he also noted
that the time was near when English would catch up with them,
especially in the cities. "The children who play in the
streets soon grow accustomed to the language which the others
use. And even if parents faithfully insist on Norwegian indoors,
it does not do much good; they can ask in Norwegian, but the
children will answer in English." {19}

In a schematic presentation of Norwegian-American history
made in 1925, O. M. Norlie dated the "American Period''
as beginning in 1890, after a "Norwegian Period,"
1825-60 and a "Norwegian-American Period," 1860-90.
"In the American Period most of them speak English only.
. . . The Norwegian summer schools are dying, and Norwegian
in the Sunday School and young people's society is of the
past." This was scarcely true at the beginning of the
period which he calls "American," though it did
become so by its end. The quarter century from 1890 to 1915
was a period when Norwegian activity was slowly dying out
at the root, but nevertheless produced taller and finer blossoms
than at any earlier period in its history. The flowering of
the social and cultural Norwegianism of these years gave to
some people an illusion of permanence, but it bore the seeds
of its own dissolution. Prosperity had come to the descendants
of the immigrants, and their sons and daughters had gone to
school. Institutions had attained a maturity which made possible
the unfolding of intellectual and literary activity. Immigration
rose to a new peak in the early years of the twentieth century.
The immigrants who now came were better educated than the
earlier ones, and were more able to take part in an urbanized
culture. But the very fact of their urbanization, their comparative
prosperity, and their education made [19] it easier for them
to enter American society on even terms. They still used Norwegian
as their chief medium, but it was a Norwegian which no longer
commanded the same simple loyalty as before. They also knew
English, and their children did not learn Norwegian to the
same extent as had the children of the early rural immigrants.
{20}

The first signs of institutional concern about the situation
appear around 1890. A pastor of the Norwegian Synod wrote
anonymously in the Synod's chief organ about the inevitability
of the transition to English and the need for preaching and
teaching in that language. He admitted that while he was a
student at the seminary, he had not seen any need for preaching
in English. But now he had had to catch up on his English,
and he demanded that the Synod provide English textbooks for
the instruction of the young. He wished the children to learn
Norwegian also, as his own had done, but deplored that many
children were growing up with an inability to speak freely
in English on religious subjects. The historian Laurence M.
Larson reports that at a church convention which he attended
as a delegate in 1897 only one speaker had the temerity to
speak in English, and faced general disapproval for so doing.
It does not appear that any sermons were being preached in
English before 1900. But, in the words of a Synod pastor,
"English seems to lie in the air everywhere." This
pastor did not believe that the church should insist on Norwegian,
though he himself wished to keep it as long as possible: "That
would be to place the language above the kingdom of God."
The suggestions, he made with regard to the transition were
eminently sound and seem to have been followed: that English
translations should be provided, so that the specifically
Lutheran atmosphere would not be lost; and that congregations
should not immediately change over to English, but should
become bilingual and make the transition gradually. {21} [20]

Other expressions of opinion about this time tend in the
same direction; for example, John Dahle, who points out that
English is the speech of most of the young people. Andreas
Wright (1835-1917), a pastor of the United Norwegian Lutheran
Church, wrote in 1904 that "our religious schools will
still be conducted in Norwegian for some time, but the day
is not distant when they must be held in English. . . You
cannot force America to speak Norwegian, but it has forced
us to try to talk English and to have our children brought
up in it." An outspoken pastor of the younger generation
in Hauge's Synod, Lars Harrisville (1889-1925), accused his
colleagues of deliberately hindering the advancement of the
church by insisting on the Norwegian language. "The pastor
may ignore the English work. He may hold back the tide for
a while. He may ridicule it. He may accuse the children and
young people of being high-toned and foolish. But at the least
opportunity the young people will go to some neighboring church
where English is preached." In the cities this is particularly
true, he claimed, and he cried, "When will the Norwegian,
the Swedish, the German, and Danish Lutheran synods awake
out of their death-sleep?" He insisted that the seminary
must produce pastors who "Speak a pure English"
and who could pronounce their "th's, s's, and r's equally
as well as a child in the kindergarten." Finally he predicted:
"The English question is coming upon us as a mighty rushing
tide. Let us be ready. . . . The storm is coming. It will
sweep the churches from shore to shore." {22}

V. THE NORWEGIAN COUNTERATTACK

Whether the statement was made in a regretful or in an aggressive
tone, the fact remained that younger church [21] leaders were
increasingly determined to promote the use of English. There
was a sudden, almost panicky realization on the part of the
champions of Norwegian that the enemy was within the walls,
determined not merely to demand a rightful place for English,
but actually hostile to many of the values represented by
the Norwegian language. This is certainly a part of the reason
for the organization on a national scale during these years
of secular societies dedicated to the preservation of various
aspects of Norwegian culture. Singers led the way in forming
the first Norwegian secular association on a wider base. In
1891 the Northwestern Scandinavian Singers' Association was
organized at Sioux Falls, South Dakota; by 1910 it had become
the Norwegian Singers' Association of America. In 1900 was
organized the so-called "Supreme Lodge" of the Sons
of Norway, a fraternity modeled on American lodges; by 1925
it had a membership of twenty-one thousand in two hundred
and fifty lodges. Its first stated purpose was "to encourage
and maintain an interest among its members in the Norwegian
language to an extent that is not in conflict with the loyalty
they owe the United States." In 1901-02 the Valdris Samband
was organized; it was the first of the bygdelags, which came
to be one of the most flourishing of the types of Norwegian
organization. In the constitution of this society we read
that one of its purposes is to gather and preserve everything
that concerns the people, the communities, and the language of Valdres. {23}

But the really central organization in this movement was
Der Norske Selskab i Amerika, organized in Minneapolis on
January 28, 1903. The preservation of the Norwegian language
was the first plank in its platform, as appears from the statement
of its purposes in its constitution: "The [22] purpose
of the Society shall be to work for the preservation by the
Norwegian people in America of a) their ancestral tongue,
b) their historical memories and traditions, c) their interest
in Norwegian literature, art, song, and music, and d) their
national characteristics (folkelige eiendommelighed) --- to
the extent that this can be reconciled with our obligations
and position in American society." The leaders included
many of the best-known pastors, professors, and writers among
the immigrants; the organization was widely noticed in the
press and won support from many sides. Many fine speeches
were held at the annual meetings; but the membership always
remained small and its influence correspondingly limited.
The activities which won most attention were the setting up
of Norwegian monuments (chiefly of authors) in various centers,
awarding of a fifty-dollar annual prize for the best piece
of Norwegian-American literature and a medal for the winners
of Norwegian declamatory contests. {24}

The dreams entertained by the founders had been a good deal
more ambitious. Professor Julius E. Olson wanted the society
to publish editions of popular Norwegian classics that might
reach a wide public --- including the young people who ought
to be given norskhedens stempel (the stamp of Norwegianness).
It was his opinion that Norwegian was an asset to the church:
"As soon as the Norse tongue is silenced, our people
will discover the open doors in other churches and find it
easier to leave the church of their fathers." Another
early contributor declared that the practices then current
in church and school showed that bilingualism could be maintained;
however difficult, it was not impossible. {25}

This came to be the chief theme of the publication sponsored
by the society, the Kvartalskrift, which appeared from 1905
to 1922 under the constant editorship of the author and journalist
Waldemar Ager. In the first volume he [23] rejected a view
propounded by Johannes B. Wist that the chief function of
the society was to act as a bridge between the immigrants
and the culture of Norway. Ager declared that it was more
important to create something original, a literature and a
culture that would have their own life. But this could only
occur, he felt, if the Norwegian language were maintained
as the group medium. "That a people give up their language
is tantamount to cultural decay." He stated also, "History,
I believe, will tell us that no nation can let its language
decay and remain unpunished." {26} He appealed repeatedly
to parents to teach their children Norwegian as a means of
preserving the cultural continuity of the Norwegian group.
The idea that the immigrant's soul somehow found its most
adequate expression in Norwegian and that this would remain
true of his descendants if sufficient effort were made appears
repeatedly in Ager's writings. He abhorred the concept of
the "melting pot"; in an article of 1916 he wrote
ironically that the old Americans appear to take it for granted
that the immigrants shall be happy to be melted down "into
something greater and better than they were before. . . .
Out of the melting pot there is supposed to come a new man,
a supercitizen, a superman with all the best features from
the various races and none of the bad ones. But the so-called
American does not himself wish to be assimilated with the
foreigners; he does not wish either to assimilate or take
up in himself the Russian, the Pole, or the Jew; but he wants
these to be absorbed in each other." {27} A series of
articles by Ager entitled "The Great Leveling" showed
that he valued cultural separatism as an enrichment of the
life of his new country. But he had no faith in a cultural
movement not borne by the native tongue: "In reality
it is the language --- the Norwegian language --- which is
the [24] bridge. When the language no longer carries, then
there is no bridge." {28}

In 1913 an interesting discussion of the problem was initiated
by Kristian Prestgard, editor of the literary periodical Symra.
He asked two pastors with opposing points of view to present
their opinions in his periodical. The "Norwegian"
was represented by the Reverend Kr. Kvamme, who attacked rather
bitterly the sense of shame that many Norwegian immigrants
and their descendants felt about their language and culture.
He gave examples, including expressions of scorn for "everything
that is Norwegian," the attempt to disguise Norwegian
names and adopt English ones, the feeling of prestige attaching
to "American" ways of behavior both in secular and
religious affairs, the criticism of Norwegian cultural trends
in the homeland, reluctance to speak Norwegian in the presence
of Americans. In his opinion the immigrants and their descendants
were still "more than three-fourths Norwegian and only
a tiny fraction American," and he described their striving
to be something else' as a "Yankee fever," and a
kind of childhood disease, which they will get over sooner
or later and then become healthy, normal people again."
He regarded this as a failure of personality, a loss of identity:
"One can lose some of one's identity, forget or partially
forget what one is. . . . lose one's way in a fog of 'Americanism'
such that one never again can find the way home to one's self."
The core of Kvamme's argument is the idea of a fixed national
identity and the sacred duty of each individual to feel pride
in this identity. {29}

The "American" viewpoint was represented by the
Reverend I. B. Torrison, who argued that the characteristic
quality of immigrants who had made America their permanent
home [25] was precisely that their national consciousness
had changed. "Their national consciousness is different
from the one possessed by those who have not emigrated or
who are here only temporarily and whose future lies in Norway."
This feeling was other resented or misunderstood in Norway,
and even many immigrants did not realize they possessed it
until they met non-immigrant Norwegians or revisited Norway.
Any work on behalf of Norwegian culture in this country had
to take this factor of national feeling into account: the
goal must be not to make Norwegians of the young people, but
to stimulate their pride of ancestry and their assimilation
of those elements in Norwegian culture which were of universal
value. In practice the Norwegian language was no longer an
instrument of union among the immigrants, but one of division.
His final pointed remark concerned "the relatively recent
arrivals, and those who live among us as colonials":
one reason that many of Norwegian descent shun Norwegian culture
as "foreign" is that these people "let a good
share of their Norwegian patriotism consist in scolding those
who are at home in this country." {30}

Both writers were agreed in deploring any inferiority complex
that Norwegian Americans might feel; they both favored a program
of cultural self-assertion. But there was a genuine difference
in their views of national personality which was typical of
all such discussions. The "Norwegian" point of view
was maintained also by Professor O. E. Rølvaag in a
fable called "Hvitbjørn og graabjørn, et
indiansk eventyr" (White Bears and Gray Bears, an Indian
Fairy Tale). The White or Polar Bears invade the country of
the Gray Bears and settle among them; after a time the White
Bears decided that they want to become gray, but in spite
of everything they do, they still remain white, or at best
a dirty or speckled gray. The biological simile here suggested,
which Rølvaag also used elsewhere, implies the idea
of an [26] immutable national personality. The editor Luth
Jaeger threw himself into the discussion with a strong attack
on this idea, maintaining that the immigrants' children were
being hampered in their wholehearted devotion to America by
the emphasis on the Norwegian language and "foreign ideals."
The young people cannot "divide themselves and be both
Norwegian and American without harming their development as
American men and women." And, "To be a good American
does not require a denim of one's ancestors and the Norwegian
heritage. But then we must also not sell our American birthright
for a mess of Norwegian pottage." The writer P. P. Iverslie,
who had grown up in this country, disagreed violently with
Jaeger and instanced his own upbringing in both languages
and cultures as an example of how it was not only possible
but even desirable to maintain bilingualism. "What a
poverty-stricken half-life it would have been to know only
the Anglo-American cultural life --- and that with a Norwegian
ancestry!" His basic contention, that "those who
know two or more languages have a wider horizon than those
who know only one" has been a prominent and weighty argument
in this debate. It is repeated by Pastor Hulteng in a contribution
to the same discussion, contending that young people should
and could learn two languages because of the ancestral heritage
whose values would be lost otherwise. In his predictions for
the future, however, Hulteng was probably the least realistic
of the contributors; he did not want bilingual congregations,
but advocated that those who wanted English in the church
should form all-English congregations or even a distinct English
synod. "But that goal," he wrote, "still seems
to be far in the future." {31} The leading historian
of the church, the Reverend J. A. Bergh, wrote in 1914 that
the church must keep up with language development; "but
most church work is [27] still conducted in Norwegian, and
this will no doubt continue for a long time." {32}

The time of change proved to be less distant than Hulteng
and Bergh had foreseen. The leaders of the church were not
disposed to countenance any splitting up of congregations
or synods into purely English and Norwegian parts. They preferred
to keep parents and children together in the same organizations,
instituting parallel services in the two languages so that
both old and young might be satisfied. The Norwegian Lutheran
Church was still split into a multitude of synods, and the
problem of union was more important during these years than
the problem of language. But on the local, congregational
level the battle raged over a wide sector, for the language
question was one that only the congregations had the power
to settle. The president of the United Norwegian Lutheran
Church, the Reverend T. H. Dahl, reported to the annual meeting
in 1912 that the great need of the Synod was ministers who
could preach in English. "Even parishes where the English
language rarely or never has been used in the service demand
English-speaking pastors when they change ministers. . . .
The time is past when our congregations were satisfied with
broken English. . . . It is an incontrovertible fact that
our young people are becoming more and more unfamiliar with
our mother tongue." {33} When Senator Knute Nelson of
Minnesota visited Luther College in Decorah, he brought a
message from President Theodore Roosevelt, advising the Norwegians
"not to cling too long to the Norwegian language as the
language of the church. The result would be that the church
would lose the young people. This had happened in his own
church, the Dutch Reformed." {34} The response of the
church was evident in the statistics on the use of English
in the [28] official ministerial acts. By 1915 nearly one
fourth of the sermons delivered in Norwegian Lutheran churches
were in English: the percentage had risen from none in 1900
to 22 per cent in 1915. Those ministrations which predominantly
affected the young were even more anglicized: religious instruction
in the Sunday school and confirmation training was 27 per
cent English. The strategic positions were all held by the
older generation, but the trend was clear, as is shown by
Norlie's table on the percentage of English services:

1905

1910

1910

Sermons

5

13

22

Confirmations

18

27

27

Sunday School

17

21

27

The three leading synods showed a similar trend though a
slower one. In the year before their union, 1916, in Hauge's
Synod the sermons were 17.2 per cent English, in the United
Lutheran Church 21.6 per cent, and in the Norwegian Synod
25.7 per cent. {35}

VI. WORLD WAR HYSTERIA

Then occurred a series of events which apparently shook the
position of the Norwegian language more than all the previous
agitation. In 1917 the three major synods were joined into
a new, giant organization called the Norwegian Lutheran Church
in America, with a membership of 443,563 in 2,811 congregations,
ministered to by 1,215 pastors. In the same year the United
States entered the First World War. Either of these events
alone would probably have affected the use of Norwegian adversely;
together they were catastrophic. Even so, they only intensified
and hastened a development that was inevitable; but their
dramatic effect was such as to make them seem responsible
for it. The union of the synods raised in many leaders the
vision of a future union among all American Lutherans, a vision
to which the [29] use of Norwegian was a distinct obstacle.
The solution of the internal squabbles and jurisdictional
rivalries left time for the church to consider its language
problem as a whole. One of the first acts of the new church
was to organize an English conference, to which congregations
"whose official language is English" might belong.
This conference had a status equivalent to that of one of
the eight geographical districts into which the church was
divided, but congregations belonging to it were also members
of the district organizations. At its first annual meeting
in 1918, this conference, called the English Association,
accepted applications for membership from fifty congregations.
In his first report the president, Reverend C. O. Solberg,
stated that the association might be only temporary, "in
order to help the widespread bilingual church in the difficult
question of handling the language transition." He recognized
that the transition "brings up problems of a spiritual
type of congenial practice in ritual and outward forms, and
many others." {36}

Except for the minutes of the English Association and some
of the financial reports, the language of all church documents
and of debate on the floor was still Norwegian in 1918. But
in this very first annual meeting of the amalgamated church
there is a peculiar note of insistence on the importance of
a rapid transition. The president's report declares that "one
of the most urgent matters before us at this meeting is unquestionably
the so-called 'English work.'" He recommended the appointment
of a committee to make proposals on the most effective means
of meeting the threatened loss of younger members due to rival
activity by non-Lutheran churches or even by English (i.e.
English-speaking) Lutheran churches. But his most startling
proposal was to abandon the name adopted in the previous year
for the new church by omitting the word "Norwegian"
in its [30] title and substituting some such name as "The
United Lutheran Synod." President H. G. Stub, himself
an effective speaker of Norwegian, denied any possible charge
of being disinterested in his Norwegian background and the
preservation of Norwegian culture. But he pleaded the unwillingness
of congregations and individuals to join a synod designating
itself as "Norwegian"; he asserted that the Swedish
Augustana Synod had abandoned the term "Swedish"
many years earlier and that the German Missouri Synod had
abandoned the term "German" in 1917. (The Augustana
Synod had never included the word "Swedish" in its
name.) He won strong support for his proposals; for example,
a testimonial from the president of the North Dakota district
to the effect that "the last year has promoted the transition
to English in a disturbing degree" and that the pastors
must see to it that the needs of the young are not neglected.
The proposal to change the name was adopted by a vote of 533
to 61. As it turned out, this preliminary constitutional change
was not effected for many years; two years later, in 1920,
the annual meeting refused to confirm the action and voted
the word "Norwegian" back by 577 to 296! {37}

It is clear that the 1918 meeting was influenced by a wind
of public opinion that did not grow naturally out of the situation
within the church. The change of name was so sudden that no
one had even had time to think up a suitable new one. The
president's report reveals quite clearly the source of pressure:
"Since our country entered the war, a great reversal
has taken place in the direction of rapid Americanization.''
A critic of the action taken at the meeting writes that "the
killing poison gas of the war spirit was strongly in evidence.''
Those who tried to oppose the change were told that their
opinions would lay them open to the suspicion of being disloyal.
{38} At one of the meetings a circular from the office [31]
of Governor Harding of Iowa was read. The governor had forbidden
the public use of any foreign language in his state by a proclamation
of May 23, 1918, and in his circular he interpreted the intention
of this proclamation. He did not wish to forbid the use of
foreign languages by those who did not understand English;
but he did declare that their misuse "is resulting in
discord among our own patriotic people and in giving our enemies
an opportunity to hinder the work of our Government during
these critical times." A resolution was also adopted
refusing admission to the theological seminary to students
who had not mastered the English language, since they could
no longer find parishes. {39}

The results of this concerted action on the part of ecclesiastical
and secular leaders were not slow in appearing in the statistical
reports of the church. The percentage of services in Norwegian
fell from 73.1 to 61.2 in 1918, or more than in any preceding
or following year. About nine thousand Norwegian services
became English during this year alone. That this move was
somewhat overhasty is shown by the fact that the percentage
bounded back up to 65.7 and 62.8 during the following two
years, bringing it more into line with the normal decrease.
From 1918 to 1948 the fall in percentage of Norwegian services
was almost predictably steady, constituting an annual drop
averaging 2.3 per cent, which probably corresponds approximately
to the death toll of the older generation. Against this background.
we see how lent the drop of 1918 was.

A generation of monolinguals was clearly on the march. Their
voice is heard most distinctly in the annual reports of the
English Association within the church. The report of 1920
is especially insistent that "English" interests
be more actively represented in the high councils of the church,
that theological training in English be encouraged, and that
evangelistic work among potential Lutherans be extended. The
report warns advocates of English not to be overoptimistic
[32] and cites figures to show how strong the position of
Norwegian is and how weak many of the all-English congregations
are. One section of the report has the interesting suggestion
that a church using the English language has essentially different
problems from one using Norwegian: it becomes a church which
seeks to proselytize among all peoples and no longer enjoys
the sheltered existence of a "state" church. There
is no doubt that the language had been the chief asset of
the church among the immigrants; but now it was, in the opinion
of some, rapidly becoming a liability. {40}

VII. THE LAST RALLY

The supporters of Norwegian were taken by surprise in 1917-18,
but the end of the war made it possible for them to counterattack.
The Norwegian-language press re-echoed with appeals on behalf
of the language and the name "Norwegian." Waldemar
Ager continued his campaign in the columns of Kvartalskrift;
a bitter note crept into some of his articles, as in this
passage from 1919' "In order to kill whatever soul the
immigrant may have brought with him, someone has hatched the
plan of cutting him off as much as possible from outside cultural
nourishment by forbidding him the use of the only language
in which he can secure nourishment for his soul. It is a cultural
blockade whereby his 'foreign' soul is to be starved out,
and the bidding that he must build himself a new soul is accompanied
by an authorized plan for that soul all worked out for him
by salaried government functionaries in Washington. {41} But
his old Norske Selskab no longer seemed to have much vitality
left in it.

A new organization was felt to be necessary, and leading
pastors, professors, and writers gathered again as they had
done in 1903; this time they met in Eau Claire on October
19, 1919. They organized a society with the fitting name of
For Fædrearven ---"for the ancestral heritage."
The [33] constitution was not specific about preserving the
language, but emphasized the cultural values: "To awaken
among the people of Norwegian stock in America a deeper appreciation
of and love for the great values we have received from our
fathers in history, language, religious and secular literature,
art, and national characteristics." {42} But whereas
Ager had been the moving spirit of the old society, the man
who surged to the front in the new one was Ole E. Rølvaag,
professor at St. Olaf College and author; in the forefront
among Norwegian-American cultural leaders, he still was not
as well known outside his group as he soon afterward became.
He was elected secretary and edited the publications of the
society, the most important of which was a page headed "For
fædrearven" in the Canton, South Dakota weekly,
Visergutten, February 3, 1921 to June 15, 1922. {43} Many
of his essays in this publication were reprinted in his book
Omkring fædrearven, which appeared in 1922. {44}

Rølvaag's doctrines were the outgrowth, in the words
of his biographers, of "a social and cultural philosophy
built upon years of experience and serious thinking."
Rølvaag's direct contacts in his classrooms with the
young people of the church gave his ideas a more authentic
ring than those evolved by men associated only with the older
generation. In his classes he also had a forum from which
he could naturally expound his doctrines; he was in addition
gifted with a personality and a talent of literary expression
that won him followers among the younger generation. Rølvaag
was an idealist, not amenable to the kind of practical but
compromising reasoning which was fashionable in his day. He
was also stubborn and outspoken, with a vein of quiet, earthy
humor which gave his utterances force if not always tact.
An extended discussion of the views he advanced may be [34]
found in his biography. In brief, he advocated a cultural
pluralism for Americans, based on a devotion to the heritage
of their fathers: a knowledge of Norwegian was an "ethical
duty" resting on every descendant of Norwegians. This
"duty" did not hamper, but advanced the best interests
of America. The creative emphasis is clear in the words he
used in a classroom lecture: "I am well aware that many
people today are seeking to blot out all racial traits in
this country. To me such an act is tantamount to national
suicide. If richness of personal color is desirable in the
individual personality, why should the monotonous gray be
desirable as a national idea?" {45} When Rølvaag
resigned as secretary of For Fædrearven in 1922, it
quietly collapsed. Its chief function had been to give an
outlet for Rølvaag's energy at a time when the events
of the war and its antiforeign psychosis had seriously disturbed
him. The discussion of the twenties was the richer for his
contributions; and even if they did not alter the course of
development, they were their own justification, if only for
the stimulus they provided toward his writing of Giants in
the Earth.

There was in the twenties a general feeling that an era had
come to its close, in spite of everything Rølvaag and
his fellow believers could advance. The number of living Norwegian
immigrants had reached its peak in 1910 with 403,858 and declined
in 1920 to 363,862. In 1924 Congress passed the National Origins
Act, which allotted to the Norwegian group an annual quota
of immigrants amounting to only 2,377. Farsighted leaders
could not help but see that this was the handwriting on the
wall. An immigrant observer who had returned to Norway after
twenty years of wide experience among his countrymen had written
in 1918: "As long as Norwegian emigration continues at
the same undiminished pace as hitherto, the Norwegian language
will survive in America, and just so long the church and the
press will work [35] side by side with the immigrants in retaining
the language. But when immigration ceases, . . . . it will
not take a generation before the Norwegian language is a thing
of the past in the Norwegian-American settlements." {46}
This feeling that the era was ending may have contributed
to the enthusiasm with which the Norse-American Centennial
was celebrated in 1925. The initiative came from the associated
bygdelags and the celebration was carried through by a committee representing
all religious and secular organizations among the immigrants.
The program and the exhibits at the Minnesota fair grounds
included the finest that could be displayed by the group;
it was an impressive demonstration of the passing of an era.

Notes

<1> This essay is chapter nine of an unpublished manuscript
entitled "The Norwegian Language in America: A Study
in Bilingual Behavior."

<9> See the excellent discussion in Blegen, American
Transition, chapter 8.

<10> Arthur C. Paulson and Kenneth Bjork, tr. and ed.,
"A School and Language Controversy in 1858," in
Norwegian-American Studies and Records, 10:90 (Northfield,
1938). The letter cited appeared originally in Emigranten (Madison, Wisconsin), November 1 and 8, 858.

<14> Nordlyset, October 28, December 30, 1847; Emigranten,
November 15, 1858, April 18, 1859. The Chicago letter writer,
Rasmus Sørensen, is probably not the same as the schoolmaster
mentioned above; the latter's home was in Waupaca County,
Wisconsin.

<17> Skandinaven, December 20, 1871, March 27, 1872,
October 17, December 27, 1876; Blegen, American Transition,
261. The Wisconsin law authorized instruction "in any
of the foreign languages, not to exceed one hour a day."